Summary of Stephanie Coontz's The Way We Never Were

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The traditional family is an ahistorical amalgam of structures, values, and behaviors that never existed in the same place at the same time. The notion that traditional families fostered intense intimacy between husbands and wives while creating mothers who were totally available to their children, for example, is an idea that combines some characteristics of the white, middle-class family in the mid-nineteenth century and some of a rival family ideal first articulated in the 1920s. #2 The family structures of the Cleavers and the college-educated title figure of Father Knows Best represent a conscious rejection of the Waltons’ model. #3 When people ask us to go back to the traditional family, I always suggest they pick a date for the family they want to have. Once pinned down, they are invariably unwilling to accept the package deal that comes with their chosen model. #4 People who lived in these periods were rarely enamored of their family arrangements. Colonial Americans lamented the great neglect in many parents and masters in training their children, and observers began to worry that children were becoming too sheltered in the late nineteenth century.